Michael Cohen just dropped a collusion bombshell in the Russia investigation - CNNPolitics

Michael Cohen just dropped a collusion bombshell in the Russia investigation - CNNPolitics

"Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN. Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said."

Holy crap.

Let's take a quick step back for some context. The June 2016 meeting between a group of Russians and the top brass of the Trump campaign, including the candidate's eldest son and son-in-law, has long been at the center of questions -- from special counsel Robert Mueller and others -- about whether there was any sort of collusion between a foreign country and the Trump campaign in 2016. When news of the meeting first broke, Donald Trump Jr. insisted it was a brief and unimportant gathering focused on an obscure adoption law that the Russians wanted changed.

But as the story came into closer focus, it became clear that the genesis of the meeting was a promise on behalf of the Russians, by a go-between named Rob Goldstone, that they had dirt on Hillary Clinton that they wanted to pass along to the Trump brain trust. "Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer," Trump Jr. wrote in an email to Goldstone about the promised dirt.

We also later learned that Trump himself had been involved in the crafting of his son's initial statement to the media about the meeting, a revelation that contradicted past claims that he was uninvolved. In June, The New York Times revealed that not only had the President known about the statement, but that he had dictated himself.